Systemd birthDate: What OS-level age data means for the FOSS community#

Systemd merged a change adding an optional birthDate field to userdb JSON (reported broadly 2021 Mar 2026), here i have listed some data and references:

They’re all connected to these laws: California AB-1043, effective Jan 1 2027; Brazil SB26-051 / Lei 15.211/2025. The thing is that these laws are NOT for age-verification but for age-storaging, so my question to all of you readers is: what do you do with that stored data, if the OS can’t check if it’s true? What’s the point of storing data that could be faked? Is this just a “placeholder” for something bigger?

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